


Warm and Safe

by Nefertiti_22002



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (TV), Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Post-Coital Cuddling, Romantic Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-15
Updated: 2020-05-15
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:00:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24192496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nefertiti_22002/pseuds/Nefertiti_22002
Summary: After making love, Gilbert falls asleep and Jonathan lies watching him and thinking about the similarities and differences in how each of them grew up and came to magic--and to each other.
Relationships: Gilbert Norrell/Jonathan Strange
Kudos: 6





	Warm and Safe

**Author's Note:**

> Most stories pairing these two, including my own, tend to focus on Gilbert's adoration of Jonathan and his delight when he finds that Jonathan loves him. I thought I would reverse the situation a little and have Jonathan thinking about how much he adores Gilbert.

Gilbert Norrell and Jonathan Strange were lying, wrapped in each other’s arms and comfortably under the covers of what they now thought of as their bed rather than simply Gilbert's. They had been sleeping together in it for nearly a month now. 

When they had first been reunited in the Darkness at Hurtfew Abbey, they had worked together to cast the spells that had saved Lady Pole and Arabella Strange from a Fairy’s enchantment.

After recovering from the terrors and triumphs of that fateful night, the pair had been delighted to find that they could talk and work so easily together, despite their past conflicts. That delight soon bubbled over into love, which they confessed to each other about two weeks later. They had performed acts of amorous congress, as Gilbert put it, at least once a day ever since. 

On this particular night, they had enjoyed a slow, gentle, drawn-out act of amorous congress and had been enjoying the afterglow for about half an hour, occasionally murmuring endearments to each other.

Gilbert looked up into Jonathan’s eyes and said, “That was wonderful. I still feel the effects down to my toes. I feel as if all my bones had turned to water. I do so enjoy it when we take our time about it.”

“Yes, but you say the same thing when we go about it more vigorously.”

“True. It is equally wonderful either way.” He yawned and wriggled a little further under the covers, still held within Jonathan’s arms. He added, “Mmmm, Jonathan … so warm …”

Jonathan chuckled and was about to tease his lover, as he much enjoyed doing, with a remark along the lines of, “So, you think of me as little more than a glorified bed-warming pan.”

Before he could begin, however, Gilbert added softly, “… and safe.”

Jonathan stifled his comment. After all, to someone subject to feeling the cold, warmth was really quite important. He himself had never been subject to feeling the cold until his time during the war. There had been nights, and indeed days, when he had been in the Peninsula lending his magic aid to the Duke of Wellington’s troops and felt very cold. Occasionally he had sheltered with the soldiers in barns with great holes in their walls or even in the open countryside. On such occasions he had been unable to sleep, even when he and Jeremy Johns pressed up together to share warmth. Yes, warmth could be a precious thing. That Gilbert treasured the warmth of lying in his embrace was nothing to be dismissed with a casual little joke.

And safety. Certainly to someone as fearful as Gilbert, with all his little frights about mice and his inclination to exaggerate the dangers of encounters with other people, safety was profoundly important as well.

Jonathan began to think, for the first time in a serious way, about how the small Gilbert Norrell had grown up. Lonely, afraid, perhaps even cold at a young age. Gilbert had told him about his parents’ death in an influenza epidemic when he was only four. His wealthy uncle had given him a home and a superb education, but he had paid little attention to the young Gilbert otherwise. He had provided a devoted nurse, who became like a mother to the lad, but she was abruptly dismissed when he turned thirteen and too old, his uncle said, to need a nurse. After that his only companions were his excellent but distant tutor and those servants who dealt with his needs. Companions, but not friends.

When Gilbert had told him all this, Jonathan had briefly thought about his own childhood and his mother’s early death. Now he considered their respective childhoods more deeply. He thought of his own misery after his mother’s death, lying in his bed with no one to tell him a story or kiss him good-night. And his terror of his vicious father. Yes, he, too, had been a fearful boy at times, though his fears had been rather more well-founded. Not imagined mice, but the real punishments and tongue-lashings from his father. At least Gilbert had never suffered such things.

Still, fear is fear, and he felt for the terrified little Gilbert, alone in this self-same vast bed in the dark, especially in the weeks after his parents had disappeared from his life. Presumably his nurse slept in a room nearby … at least, Jonathan hoped so. But once she was gone, was anyone within his call at night? Jonathan felt badly that he had scoffed at Gilbert’s fear to Belle so long ago. Now he felt only gratitude that he could reassure and comfort this adorable little man and know that he had helped to make Gilbert as relaxed and as peaceful as he now was. 

Jonathan felt a bit drowsy, but his thoughts wandered on. How had they both survived such childhoods?

Admittedly, he himself had had respites from loneliness and fear. There were the long months each year when he was sent to his loving aunt and uncle’s home in Edinburgh, where he had thoroughly enjoyed the society of his three female cousins. With their help, he grew up to be more confident—even “arrogant,” as he ruefully reminded himself. He had become sure enough of himself not to be afraid of his father, only angry at his cold, stern contempt. In that he was luckier than Gilbert. 

Once Jonathan grew to manhood, he had thrown himself into society at Bath and other towns where other well-to-do young people gathered. Soon his father had conveniently died, and he was left quite well-off—if never nearly as rich as Gilbert. He was free to waste his youth, as Belle had repeatedly told him. Until he found magic. Initially he had had magic thrust upon him, and he only embraced it in part because it amused him but mainly because he hoped it would finally induce Arabella to marry him—as it had. Gradually, though, it ate its way into his very being. It changed his life.

He thought of how very different Gilbert’s path to magic had been. He had found magic much earlier, at the age of twelve or thirteen. Gilbert had eagerly embraced it when it appeared out of nowhere—from a single page he had chanced to find inserted loose in a book on a completely different subject. It occurred to him that he should ask Gilbert to show him that page. Surely the older magician would have preserved it as an almost sacred document!

Jonathan wondered with astonishment about how that lonely, terrified, scrawny little boy had somehow summoned up the determination and brilliance to turn himself into a great magician, the first practical magician in three hundred years. He had even played an important role in helping defeat the seemingly invincible Napoléon. He had done all this with no help from any one. On the contrary, he had somehow managed to excel at his regular classroom work and also pursue his study of magic in secret. 

The secrecy was vital, since his uncle had intended him to enter quite a different profession or simply to live the leisurely life of a wealthy country landowner. Had he discovered Gilbert’s secret, he surely would have forced him to abandon magic, since it was not at all respectable. 

No wonder, he reflected, that Gilbert had grown into such a secretive man. No wonder, never having had any friends and not being loved after the departure of his nurse, he could not bear the thought of there being other practical magicians. No wonder he had tried so hard to make magic respectable, to prove to world that he himself was as respectable as any wealthy landowner could be. 

Luckily the uncle had died when Gilbert was still a very young man, only twenty-two. In that way his own life and Gilbert’s had been similar. Gilbert was left in possession of a huge house and staff. It had also freed him to pursue magic full-time and build up his library without any necessity to hide it. It had, however, been, what, three or four years before he hired Childermass. What a very lonely life, compared to his own at that same age! A life that left Gilbert with none of the social skills that had come so easily to him.

Well, they were now each other’s only society. Even before being trapped in the Darkness, even before he lost Belle, Jonathan had slowly become so absorbed in his magic that he grew more withdrawn from society himself, writing his book in solitude at Ashfair after Belle’s apparent death. Now he felt no need of anything but Gilbert and the library and the magical adventures which they were beginning to discuss. 

Jonathan’s cogitations led him to think back to the evening when he had visited Gilbert and announced that he was going to leave his tutor and pursue his own paths to magic. He had been so nervous and upset and unsure of his decision that he had not fully concentrated on what Gilbert had told him.

Certainly he had registered that Gilbert had spent ten long years trying to contact the Raven King, desperately wishing to make direct contact with the source of English magic and perhaps to learn from him. Now, thinking back, he realized how much courage that effort must have taken. To long to be face to face with that awesome magician! What a terrifying prospect for any one, let alone such a small, fearful fellow as Gilbert must have been! How he wished he could travel back in time and encourage that young, budding magician! And what a huge disappointment the Raven King’s utter silence would have been to a lonely, desperate young man. Yet Gilbert had persisted, driven on by his love of magic. 

Jonathan was well aware from his experiences on the battlefield and especially at Waterloo that bravery was not a lack of fear. It was going ahead and doing what one needed to, even in the face of overpowering terror. Gilbert had shown that sort of bravery, and yet to no avail. No wonder he had become embittered about the old magic and chosen to pursue his own withdrawn and private path. 

Yet now the Raven King had contacted them both, in a terrifying way and yet in support of the magic which the two needed to perform. He recalled what Gilbert had said about the chaos of black birds directly after the ravens had been unleashed upon them on that fateful night: “I have been reading about it since I was a boy. That I should live to see it, Mr Strange! That I should live to see it!”

Since then the two magicians had discussed the Raven King and their amazement at realizing that their lives had somehow been part of a prophecy made many years before. But Gilbert had not again expressed the joy at finally seeing the Raven King’s magic that he had in that astonished declaration after the ravens’ attack. Still, he had no doubt that part of Gilbert’s delight at their subsequent life in the Darkness stemmed from the thought that at last John Uskglass had answered his youthful summons and apparently had been guiding their fates all along.

Thinking all this through more deeply than he ever had before, he found himself profoundly admiring Gilbert in a way that had not yet fully occurred to him. And not just admiring him but loving him even more. He realized that any lingering resentments over their past conflicts, buried deep inside himself, had melted away. That was a relief. They were destined colleagues and devoted lovers. 

He thought of how often Gilbert had expressed his joy at their newly declared love, saying that he was happier with Jonathan than he had ever been. His great joy had been magic, and now his happiness was doubled. Strange had listened to this delightedly, for of course he enjoyed being adored—and, he had to admit to himself, he had always taken it rather for granted. Well, there was his arrogance springing up again! 

What of himself? He realized that the same thing had happened to him. He was happier, more content now, despite the eternal Darkness. He would have to tell Gilbert this, and often—for Gilbert, too, deserved to feel adored.

Overwhelmed by this rush of fondness, Jonathan unwittingly squeezed Gilbert just a little more tightly. Gilbert stirred and half opened drowsy eyes.

“My sweet Jonathan, are you having trouble sleeping?” he asked softly.

“No, not at all, my dearest Gilbert. I … well, I have just been lying here, thinking about how much I love you. Do you never do that?”

“Oh, yes, sometimes if I awaken and find you still asleep, I do the same thing. I love you, too, Jonathan, very much.” He blinked and yawned.

“Go back to sleep, Gilbert. You are warm and safe with me. I’m sure I shall easily fall asleep myself in a little while.”

A tiny snore was the only response, and soon Jonathan was true to his word and joined him in slumber.


End file.
